The world has seen former President Barack Obama lead a country, be a husband, and be a girl dad, but recently, the former president admitted that he doesn’t think he would have been able to raise a son with the same ease.
“I think we did a pretty good job of raising our girls, but I’ve said often that I think I would have had more difficulty raising a son,” he said, appearing on Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson’s “IMO” podcast.
A sentiment his wife of 30+ years and podcast co-host agreed with.
“I think I might’ve been more judgmental, harder, and I would’ve tried to — I’d like to think I would have been more self-aware enough to combat that,” he continued. “But I just think father-son relationships, for me, particularly if I don’t have a dad around to show it to me, might’ve been more difficult.”
Over the years, the former president has been very candid about his relationship with his father, or lack thereof. In a 2021 Instagram post, Obama reflected on his childhood and the impact his father still had despite his absence.
“I didn’t really know my father—he left my mother and me when I was two years old, and only traveled from Kenya to visit us once, when I was ten. That trip was the first and last I saw of him; after that, I heard from him only through the occasional letter, written on thin blue airmail paper that was preprinted to fold and address without an envelope,” he captioned the picture of him and his father. “His short visit had a profound impact on my life. My father gave me my first basketball and introduced me to jazz. But for the most part, the visit left me with more questions than it answered, and I knew I would have to figure out how to be a man on my own.”
In his conversation with his wife and his brother-in-law, Obama did stress the importance of raising boys with care and intention.
“If you’re not thinking about what’s happening to boys and how are they being raised, then that can actually hurt women,” Barack said, noting how unhealthy and dangerous this can be. “[Men and boys can become] more interested in appeals by folks who say, ‘You know what, the reason you don’t feel respected is because women have been doing this, or this group has been doing this,’ and that’s not a healthy place to be.”
It’s a phenomenon he thinks has trickled into the current political landscape. “Some of the broad political trends we’ve seen not just in this country, but around the world, have to do with this sense of boys, men, not feeling as if they are seen, feeling as if they count.”
“We rightly have tried to invest in girls to make sure that there’s a level playing field and they’re not barred from opportunities,” he concluded. “We haven’t been as willing, I think, to be intentional about investing in the boys, and that’s been a mistake.”
